“It's harder than it looks,” she said, sulking in the back. “The vehicle is long, and slow. My legs are too short to reach the brakes in my human form, too long in my hybrid form, and I can’t fit in the cabin as a weretanuki.”
“Can’t you go any faster?” I asked the taxi driver.
The thirty-something old woman looked at me nervously. “There’s a lotta traffic around this time. And a toll station ahead as well. We’ll be another hour or two before we get past that, what with all the chaos and the, er, monsters falling from the sky. No offense.”
“None taken.” I wasn’t a monster, I was an entrepreneurial magical person. Not that people appreciated the difference. I could tell the extra arms, eyes, and skin gray as dark ash were making her nervous. Or maybe it was the oversized shotgun I was cleaning in her backseat.
She flinched as I racked it again. Yep, definitely the shotgun. “Sorry. Maybe we should just walk.”
And then we’d still have to run tens of miles at full tilt, arriving exhausted to who knows what sort of mimic problem.
“Screw this.” I felt Addy reaching over my shoulder. She dropped a metal device into my lap. “Sam, put this on the roof.”
[One-use multi-function illusion-bubble: Generates a visual and auditory illusion of choice around the target area for up to 2h. Illusion does not hold up to physical inspection. Price: 30 Soulcoins]
I did as told.
“Illusion: First responder!” Addy said, and the atmosphere turned fizzy.
An electrical current had all my hairs standing on end. With my spider eyes, I could see a faint blanket of warped air covering the car from front to back. Suddenly, a blaring sound rocked the car, the incessant whine of a siren cutting through the cacophony of mid-day traffic.
“Addy… did you turn us into an ambulance?” I asked as a corridor started forming in the cars ahead.
“Fastest way to get somewhere quickly. Besides teleportation.” There was not an ounce of remorse in her tone. She’d definitely done this before. Addy leaned back, arms folded behind her head. “Now floor it.”
“H-haha, wow, this is insane,” said our driver.
“I know, right? You could do a bunch of shady stuff with this kind of tech. Maybe turn your car into a presidential limousine. Or the pope-mobile. Or a hearse.” Nature photographers could use it to camouflage themselves for the best pictures, idols and performers could use it for insane special effects during performances. The potential for so much magitech was there, ready to be integrated into society. It was just gated behind insane costs only Custodians could stomach, and low production volume. If my estimations were correct, most associates didn’t see 50 soulcoins in a year. “The more I think about it, the worse I feel.”
“Eh,” Addy said, making a so-so gesture. “Morally, it's objectionable, though I guess we are a sort of first responder to extraterrestrial threats.”
“O-oh really? Hah, glad I’m not breaking any laws here then.” Our driver nervously sped down the alley. “So, what’d’you reckon it is this time? Little crabs? Big five-legged spider things?”
“Probably mimics.” Though after looking up some real-time satellite images, there was no sign of a barrier-dome forming near our target. “That’s for us to worry about. We’ll tell you to stop way before you enter the danger zone.”
“You mean the dagner zone.”
I snorted. “Addy. Where are you getting all this… smug-faced confidence from?”
“Here and there.” Her gaze flicked up and down me nervously. “Should I stop?”
“I love it. Keep it up.” If you can crack jokes like that, it means you’re doing fine, for a child soldier.
All in all, it took half an hour until the first buildings of the Canadian border town of Sault Ste. Marie rose up around us. Over a bridge, past the river and a catholic church, and then we were there. We didn’t even have to pay a toll.
I gave the driver a big tip for enduring Addy’s shenanigans, and then swiftly jogged on after her.
“You have a habit of roaming ahead,” I said.
“Scouting the area. Finding threats before they find us. It’s what my role was, in my old team.” There was no melancholy in her voice, just neutral detachment as she surveyed a two-part commercial building.
“Really now?” That didn’t fit her personality at all. She did have a healing spell, a storage spell, a ludicrous amount of Sense, and flexibility in being a weretanuki shapeshifter. But when I looked at Addy she brought to mind a knife under tension, not someone who calmly observed the enemy before making a report in front of a superior. “You feel like more of a frontliner.”
“Scouts gotta survive on their own somehow.” Which… made sense, yeah. Especially when that scout didn’t have a team anymore, with scars so raw even the thought of replacing them was cause to lash out.
Quietly, I wrapped four of my arms around her from behind, and massaged her scalp with the two that were left.
“You’re not alone.”
“I know.” She stared ahead for a moment before shrugging me off. “The target is inside the building. We’re entering the lodge through the front.”
The front, it turned out, was straight through a dentist’s clinic. The air smelled just like any other clinic did; an odor of metal, mouthwash, sterility. Addy stomped right past an unoccupied front desk stacked high with patient reports and receipts. All of them were addressed to one John Doe, Jane Smith, and in one daring case, Mary of Mary.
It was an obvious front. But for what?
Walking through an ‘employees only door’ filled me with apprehension, which was dispelled immediately as we met a second front desk, this one crewed with the most bored, cookie-cutter man imaginable. Every part of him was entirely unremarkable, to the point that it seemed a deliberate decision on his part. The only feature that stood out was his bone-deep tiredness.
He didn’t look up from the game he was playing on his phone. “Ah. Custodians, huh?”
“What gave it away?” I asked, rubbing an irritant out of my upper spider eye. “Wait, nevermind.”
Addy kicked the desk, causing him to suddenly flinch and look up at us. “System summons. Said you had an emergency. Flagged non-mandatory.”
The guy winced, though whether it was because of Addy’s tone, or because he just dropped his phone, I couldn’t tell.
He rocked forward on the poor stool he had been abusing. “Yeah, sounds about right. Friggin’, should’ve just let the demon out, but Theo would never have ok’d it. ‘Gotta show we ain’t pushovers neither,” he said. “Fuckin’, god, this just had to happen right after paternal leave.”
“Congratulations.”
“Not necessary! Having octuplets feels like a fae prank, or a curse, more times than a gift. But thank you.” He scribbled something on the back of a torn newspaper before pointing his pen first at Addy, then right at me. “You, I know you’re one of us by the smell. But you, what are you?”
“I’m a magical girl spider person thing!” I said with so much unwarranted confidence. His look had me wilting, even though I was the one holding a huge-ass gun, and he was not.
“Spider… thing… anything else?”
“Stage one vampire,” Addy said for me. “She’s unaffiliated, in case you’re trying to raise a stink.”
“Not trying, just doing my job. Vampire, huh? Explains why she’s staring at me like I’m a capri sun.”
“I don’t want to drink you!” I cried, before realizing an uncomfortable truth. “Oh. Apparently I do, just a little.”
“Long as your friend keeps her thirst in check, we’re good. Else, you’ll have to reckon with Theo.” He rubbed his hand over the piece of newspaper before tearing it off and handing it to me. “There. Welcome to the Lodge of the Lykan, Canadian branch. Keep that on you while inside our lodge at all times. Your appointment is down the hall, aaall the way down.”
Addy nodded and turned, leaving me staring at the scrap of paper covered with chicken scratch. I pocketed it, and followed next to Addy in lockstep.
“That was… odd. Any idea what this scrap is for?”
“Scentmarker. It’s like a nametag and a hall pass. Some werepeople have terrible eyesight.”
And here I thought being a were-anything was supposed to make you more than human in every regard. Then again, humans are already pretty high up there with high-end features. Great eyesight, dextrous hands, unbeatable long distance runners. Little wonder then that werepeople often had at least one normal human form; our world was built for human-shaped and -sized creatures, not ten foot, half-ton werewolves.
We passed a room where a man-sized beaver was getting his teeth fixed. A doctor-ish person was going ham on his yellowed incisors with a power tool, her assistant standing at the ready with a giant dental file in hand.
I suppose some normal devices are built for the convenience of everyone. Like powertools, and giant swords. Also guns.
“A dentist is the best type of front for a lodge,” Addy said, completely missing what I was thinking of. “Nobody visits without an appointment. This big commercial complex we’re in? The lodge bought it out slowly throughout the eighties. It hides the real footprint of the buildings inside, where everything is connected. We have dentists, dermatologists, psychologists, apothecaries, a few clubs, a bar, pretty much everything you'd ever want if you’re in trouble, or just in search for a place to belong.”
I spied a vending machine. It had dogwater. “You say we. But somehow I doubt you’re the type of person to ask for help from anyone.”
She gave me a mean side eye. I returned her a six-eyed stare.
“The Lodge holds together. Everyone who is accepted is a friend. And everyone who can help, should help. Ideally speaking.” She took a deep breath as we walked up to a door which a conspicuously normal person was standing in front of for absolutely no reason. He didn’t raise his gaze, though the wings of his nose flared for a moment before ushering us through.
Stuffy, tight walls closed in on all sides, winding and going up and down a step here or there. The darkness of old LEDs was comforting to my instincts while injecting unease into the human parts of my mind.
Oh, get over it Sam. Spiders love dark and tight spaces.
There was a commotion up ahead. One or two people were arguing loudly.
We rounded a corner and for a split second, a giant furball quickly grew to take up more of my field of vision as it flew right at me.
Ack!
I jumped. Next thing I knew I was stuck to the ceiling, every arm and leg pressing against the walls, pushing me snugly into the corner.
Mmmh, snug corner, very safe — wait, no, someone just threw a werewolf at me!
Down below, Addy had moved to intercept the furry, four-hundred pound projectile. Its back was white and its body black, the nose betraying it as a member of the mustelid family. Badger.
We were in some storage room now, a supply depot at the back of a hardware store judging by the pallets of chips and wheat products. Only now did I notice that there were further shapes mulling behind, more werepeople wearing an array of armors. They were armed to the teeth, keeping well away from a barricade leading further into the store.
Addy grunted with effort as she put the werebadger on the floor, one hand dug into its scruff while glaring ahead at a much larger shape looming in the dark.
The figure stepped into the light of an overhead lamp buzzing away, revealing… what exactly was that? It looked vaguely like Addy’s weretanuki form, except a good head taller and encased entirely in high-tech armor plates. Their face was hidden behind a mask, two glowing, round spectacles taking us in as it sized us up.
[Associate Cawl, Werehound]
“I said down, boy.” His voice was as commanding as a gun barrel to the face. “And you, girl, drop him unless you want him to tear your arm apart.”
The werebadger twisted in her grip. “Lemme go lemme go lemme go! I’ll kill it I’ll kill it I’ll fuckin’ TEAR IT APART —ekh!”
In a sudden move that was hard to follow, Addy used his momentum to slam him against a wall, and then she was on his back, arm locked around his neck. All the while she calmly looked the giant wereperson in the face, as if she wasn’t choking his subordinate out.
He took a big sniff.
“Ah. It’s you,” he said. “Figures. The lone wolf returns.”
Addy gave him a brisk nod. “Lodge member Adelaide, reporting. Lodge keeper, this is my partner Samantha.”
Awkwardly, I dropped onto my feet and gave a wave. Cawl sniffed again.
“Vampire. And something else.”
“I vouch for her neutrality,” she added quickly.
“After the stunt you pulled last time, you don’t get to vouch for anyone,” he growled.
Addy looked cowed, embarrassed. “... I’m here to make up for running off.”
How many enemies did this tanuki make on the daily? First there was Medusahead, and now this giant were… dog. Yeah, he was a weredog. He was tall, with spiky, black-brown-white fur. German shepherd. Yet, despite his menacing appearance, I wasn’t picking up any real hostility.
“Could’ve left a note. Could’ve answered my messages and calls.”
Addy whinced. “I… blocked everyone because the constant notifications were annoying.”
Oh. He’s worried about her.
He guffawed, drawing the gaze of everyone in the room. “Great. This should be a show. You can drop Beni, he’s already unconscious.”
“He’s just playing pretend,” Addy said, tightening her grip with all the nonchalance of someone squeezing water out of a rag. The werebadger, who’d been getting quieter, twitched, and redoubled his effort to tear himself free. He was doing terrible things to her forearms with those claws.
“Same old psycho,” the weredog said, spitting on the ground.
“You taught me how to deal with werebadgers.”
“Guess we’re both psychos then.” There was a glint on his face, teeth bared in a grin. A human gesture, or so I hoped. He turned to me, readjusting his spectacles. “Mustelids get crazy when they smell blood. A heritage problem. Think they’re unkillable with their leathery, saggy skin and thick heads full of anger. Wasn’t true when magic ruled the world, isn’t true now that guns can kill elephants.”
“I, uh, suppose you’re worried he’ll get himself hurt?” I hedged.
“The whelp is currently letting himself be choked out by a girl a quarter his weight who isn’t even in her warform.”
“Fuck… you…” the werebadger Beni muttered. Seeing as he didn’t have the energy to more than lightly tap her forearm, Addy loosened her grip. In his defense, he cut the arm she had been choking him with up quite a lot. A debilitating injury to anyone who wasn’t named Addy.
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One cast of [I’ll be fine] later and her arm was as good as new.
“What are we dealing with?” she asked, stepping over the limp Beni.
“Murder-bot poltergeist.”
“Grr’laxian, or voro-type?”
“Couldn’t get close enough to tell. It got two retail workers after manifesting, almost killed Beni’s brother. They’re still busy putting skin grafts on him over in the ICU.”
“You’re not worried it’ll possess a radiological machine.”
“Can’t. Old walls. Asbestos isn’t only useful for insulation, of course.”
“Of course.”
I tried to follow along with their exchange, but it was proving impossible. “I… sorry, but I’m a bit out of the loop. Can we take, like, a few steps back?”
Addy froze. “Right. Sam, this is Cawl. Veteran associate.” She sent the next sentence via system text. <
One moment.
There, time to think. Whoof, the implications. Addy mentioned training all her life to become a Custodian, but evidently it wasn’t a sure thing. The disappointment was hard to imagine. You train and train and train for, what, eight to ten years, only to hear that ‘your sacrifice is noted, but unnecessary’. Must be a terrible time at school, kids comparing left and right whether they were chosen, the nervous anticipation turning into uncertainty and then betrayal as old friends disappear around you one by one.
My spell ended, leaving me acutely aware of a new line drawn in the sand. Chosen and not chosen. Worth and… different worth.
He didn’t betray any bitterness as he talked about how he earned his daily bread.
“I get called in to hold the line,” he said. I noticed the scabbard with the man-sized shortsword hanging from his side, and a long-ass rifle magnetically stuck to his back.
“You’re kinda decked out.”
“You’re not exactly lightly armed yourself.” He snorted. “Hard work and a bit of risk pays off. If you’re still alive to be paid of course. Between convergence assignments I do charity work for the lodge, show fresh meat how to defend itself, the works. Wasn’t equipped for this, don’t want any of my boys and girls getting themselves killed. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if a generous Custodian nearby was willing to lend a hand.”
“And now that we’re here, you don’t have to make an official quest,” Addy muttered. “Cheapskate.”
“Hey, can’t blame me for managing my paltry hoard. The same trick won’t work the next time, unless another Custodian just so happens to be nearby. And there will be a next time.” We stopped at the barricade. He gave the stacked pallets of noodles and potato sacks a tap. “Past here is your territory. Don’t rush yourselves. We couldn’t approach it with drones because of its ECCM, so no intel besides ‘it’s dangerous’. And try not to cause too much collateral damage.”
“Of course,” Addy and I both said. We gave each other a look.
Yeah. I’m lying too. Sorry, no way I’m prioritizing a 24-inch plasma-screen tv over one of my lives.
Addy gave him a curt nod, changed into her hybrid form, and hopped over. I clambered right past her. Aisles and aisles of tools spread out ahead of us. Screws, hammers, nailguns. It was a hardware store after all, and it was dead quiet.
“I think it’s about time you fill me in on what exactly we’re dealing with,” I whispered. Becca had stayed quiet in my backpack during all of this, but even she seemed interested enough to poke her head out.
Addy looked around, Hocchi in her left hand, a Prickler in her offhand. She was left handed, apparently. Her ears swiveled and her tail swished nervously.
“... this would be a lot easier to explain if you knew the basics of what lives on the sister planets.” She sighed. “Basically, Poltergeists are errant souls that can, for some reason, interact with mundane matter. Like ghosts, they’re a universal occurence. Some civilizations have made use of them. The murder-bots use captured souls in cyber- and guerilla warfare, and the scalies build mech-shaped cages around the captured enemies they don’t eat, torture the prisoner until its soul interfaces with the machine, then let those warmachines loose on the enemy. The warmachines are stronger than a murderbot poltergeist, but less adaptable since they can’t switch possessed objects.”
“How’d either of them get in this building?”
“Unlucky convergence after shock.” Addy shrugged. “System often can’t detect single-entity incursions. Not enough fine-grain measurement tools.”
I gave her a nod. “So basically, we’re looking for some possessed tools. If it swaps objects, it’s a ghost. If it’s stuck to one big one, it’s a trapped person.”
She nodded back. “In case of a ghost, we will be destroying its host matter one way or the other. If it swaps to a different item, we destroy that too. Eventually, it will run out of energy, and dissipate on its own. That’s the easiest solution since we can’t actually banish any… ghosts…”
She gave me an odd look.
“I can try—”
“— no.”
“But what if—”
“You are hugging this mechanical monstrosity over my dead body.”
“And if there’s a person inside?”
She took a deep breath. I could tell that she wanted to tell me off. But if the best strategy was to get in close and give this tortured soul a friendly hug, then she needed to accept that. Who knows, we might even become friends?
“... Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll adjust our strategy depending on how things go. Murderbots are no joke, but lizards are just cruel for the heck of it. They don’t feel much pain at all, so they have no trouble inflicting it, on purpose or by accident.”
“Great. I feel so much better already.” Except no, that sounded horrible. Why did any civilization feel it was necessary to use people as fuel for their warmachines? Maybe empathy wasn’t as universal an evolutionary trait as sci-fi shows implied.
Something clattered nearby. Both of us turned to face the threat.
A service bot slowly crept around the corner. It was one of those newfangled models that promised to replace the cheapest laborers, though in truth corporations were replacing workers with objectively worse automated bots mostly because pushing AI made them sound innovative, and to curb any potential unions’ power base. This model was a chatbot on wheels that could be configured to remotely control forklifts in case you needed some extra help in storage. Physically, the models ranged from the shape of an extra-wide Roomba for keeping the place clean, to that of a child-sized Dalek from Temu for other tasks. They maneuvered the world by scanning barcodes and always keeping to the white lines on the floor, the ones that were popping up in every supermarket these days.
I thought they were cute.
“Attention, this area is closed. Please vacate the premises,” it said in an awfully cheerful synthetic voice before continuing to drive in a circle.
We peeked out of the alleyway. A small army of the bots were having a meltdown as they tried to maneuver around a puddle of spilled paint. It was white paint. One of the braver ones rolled forward until its wheels almost dipped into the puddle, then stopped. Its red light blinked in frustration.
“The future is now,” I muttered, to which Addy snorted a laugh.
A distant bang shook us out of our investigation.
“They’re quite distracting. Keep an eye on them.” Addy lowered her voice. “I go right, you go left.”
I checked my Spab-4, readied two Pricklers, my Goo Gun, and a Toothpick, and sent a body double to stalk ahead. Periodically, while following its trail, I looked to the right, watching Addy pass aisle after aisle. She was as quiet as a whisper. To my immense displeasure, it was impossible not to hear the quiet squeaks of my shoes on the polished floor. Now seemed a good time to put my training to the test.
Alright double, do what I do, but slightly delayed. Appear natural. That’s it, change up the walking rhythm a bit.
My double sauntered ahead while I crept behind it in lockstep. It was the most realistic double I had managed to date. Even its facial expressions reminded me of myself, except injected with just a little bit more confidence.
As it turned out, the closer to perfect I charged a spell, the easier it was to control it. Even a one-percent contamination had an outsized effect on the result. A body double with a one percent fear charge might not be shivering or vibrating in any way that was obvious to the average person, but I was rarely dealing with normal people in my line of work. Addy had drilled perfection into me relentlessly. Now I could reach a pure 100% charge more often than not, and it was amazing.
We passed the area reserved for cut wood and shingles. Up ahead was an open area filled with kitchens and kitchen accessories. I leaned around a rack of knives. A general sense of pandemonium filled the air above a floor covered in stone and glass shards like caltrops. One of the kitchens up ahead was rattling with an unseen force. Then, an oven broke free of its constraints, orange, baleful light glowing within as it waddled like a fat duck.
A tap on my shoulder. Becca was offering me my bazooka.
“Oh. Thanks Becca, but I’m not using the big guns until I know for sure there isn’t a person stuck inside there.” Though I have no idea where one would even fit.
Suddenly, the oven turned, and I had a moment to appreciate the dancing lights of glowing potential bouncing around inside its body like fairylights.
Then a laser as wide as I was tall evaporated my body double.
What the AAAAH—
I slammed onto the ground, the laser passing over me and melting through a rack of kitchenware, then half of a kitchen, then an entire steel beam. The heat was a brief torture on my back, but worse was the light. I was blind, hopefully not permanently.
Ow, ow, ow — “[More Spider Eyes]” I yelled, removing, then reforming my main spider eyes, circumventing the blindness.
Once again blessed with the miracle of sight, I was greeted with a view down a circular hole that had melted through and past several kitchen counters. The oven that had somehow produced this insane blast of flame was similarly melted. I gave it some help with my Pricklers and Toothpick, only to realize that it was entirely inanimate.
“Above!” Addy cried and I rolled to my side, evading a bladed ceiling fan by inches.
Its leg-length blade was embedded into the solid ground. A moment later, it started to rotate towards me.
“What the hell is up with this thing?” I cried, running for my life and splitting two more body doubles off of me. One charge left, but you bet I was charging a lot of fear right this moment. “Ovens don’t normally shoot lasers!”
Addy popped up next to me. She parried the windmilling fan, its wings each hitting her sword like a buzzsaw.
“RancorRise!” she yelled, transforming into her big weretanuki form since even as a hybrid it had been pushing her back.
With a mighty heave, she launched it far above her head. It arced across the large hall like a boomerang before shattering a wing on a steel beam and twirling into the ground.
“I didn’t see a ghost, but I don’t see how a person could fit inside a ceiling fan,” I commented, but a quick look to the side revealed that Addy was fixated on the target ahead.
“After it!” Addy said. “Don’t give it room to maneuver.”
Which seemed like a terrible idea. It landed with a crunching thud, blades embedded into the ground. For the briefest moment, I saw what looked like a blue bolt of lightning drain out of it and jump right towards me.
A blue translucent shimmer appeared around me for a brief moment. The bolt of lightning hit it, sending an uncomfortable zap through my body before bouncing away.
[Intrusion attempt detected. Activating system firewall.]
“Ack! The damn thing just tried to hack me!”
Addy jumped after it, bouncing off of a supporting pillar and disappearing over the nearest dividing wall.
Seconds later, the wall exploded outwards. A monstrous, truly gargantuan figure strode out from behind it, nearly crushing Addy underfoot. Its legs were stacked fridges, its torso a tower of bathtub-sized plant pots, and its arms were made of various power tools, sharp on one side, blunt on the other. If this was a murderbot poltergeist, then it was an incredibly powerful one.
It almost took my head off with a swing from a hedge trimmer. I ducked, then sidestepped multiple tons worth of smart fridges. One of them opened its doors, ejecting a frigid gust of air from the colossus’ shins. One of my illusions froze solid, poofing out of existence as in its place a me-shaped statue shattered on the ground.
The subwoofers in its shoulders screamed as Addy jumped onto its calves and sliced where its achilles tendon would have normally been, cutting through the entire fridge. It barely stumbled. I shot the beast with my shotgun, predictably doing just as little. A lawnmower fell off of its shoulder but that was about it.
We need a better plan.
“Addy, tactical time-out!” I yelled.
Skittering like a bug, less like a human, I swerved around counters, tables, wardrobes, anything that would allow me to break line of sight. I came to a stop behind a king-sized display bed that was flipped onto its side, breath ragged. Addy followed seconds after.
“It’s both,” she huffed. “Poltergeist and lizard prisoner.”
“Oh come on.”
“The prisoner is definitely inside the mech, and the poltergeist is swapping between objects, enhancing them in exchange for consuming their durability,” she said, licking a jagged slice along her forearm. “They’re working together. Not sure why.”
“We can just ask the prisoner if they’re still lucid?” Addy shook her head and I groaned. “Why can’t anything ever be easy?”
“If it was, the world wouldn’t need people like us.”
I gulped down a few mouthfuls of air. I had one body double still running rings around the thing, and a second one was charged by now.
“I’ll take the poltergeist, you take the mech.”
“Race you to see who finishes their opponent first?” Addy suggested.
“You just want me to bet my hard-earned soulcoins, which I won’t,” I shot back. “I’m a fiscally responsible spider.”
“Fair. Instead, show me you actually learned something these past few days.”
I rolled my eyes, grew a spider eye on the tip of my finger, and poked it out of our hiding spot. The kitchen mech was standing still, looking left and right, trying to predict where my body double might pop up next.
This way.
My double sprinted out from behind a toppled pile of earth and gunned it straight towards us. The kitchen mech was quick to follow. No sign of the poltergeist so far.
I held up a handful of fingers to Addy.
Three.
Addy twirled her sword. Shortsword. Long sword. Bastard sword. Buster sword.
Two.
My double ran past us.
One…
The stomping footfalls passed us too. With a heavy swing she cut into, then through an entire leg. The mech tried to stop, but this time physics was on our side. It fell together into a great heap and immediately, Addy was on it, hacking, slashing, smashing. Despite it being twice as tall as Addy in her weretanuki form, its mass meant nothing to our combined teamwork.
This must be how a pair of tiny mimics feel after taking down a human. Assuming they can feel anything. Ambushes are effective, and size isn’t everything.
The thing had stopped moving as microwaves short-circuited and portable electric grills were fried in their own battery juices. One of the fridges briefly opened up, trying to flash-freeze one of my body doubles, but I blasted the dang thing with a double-burst of prickler lasers. The fridge shattered as if it was made of ice. I watched as a pale elvenoid shape left it and settled into an electric gas grill.
Oh no you don’t.
I lit up the propane canister with lasers until it was glowing red-hot. The display grills weren’t using full bottles of course, so it just slagged instead of exploding.
Where to next, where to next… there!
A plasma screen crackled dangerously. Perforated.
A garden hose tried to choke me like a snake. Exploded.
A jumble of console controllers, tv remotes, computer mice, and so much more grew into a soccerball-sized bundle and tried to break my shin. I liquified them, then stomped the rest into the cracked floor until I was absolutely sure that there was not a single working piece left.
No sign of the poltergeist. It couldn’t have escaped through the air or I would’ve noticed it.
In the meantime, Addy had felled her colossus. It was out of working limbs, little more than a pile of twitching garden accessories. I dismissed my remaining body doubles, opting for more eyes to keep a lookout while she tore something small out of the mech’s chest. It shuddered, then lay lifeless.
The object looked like a tiny sarcophagus, as tall as my hand from wrist to the tip of my middle finger. Its walls were made of corrugated steel and welded iron. Tiny air holes were poked into it at irregular intervals. Whatever was inside, it smelled harshly of wild berries and offal.
“No matter what’s inside, it isn’t going to look good,” Addy warned, turning her sword into a pocket knife and quickly leveraging the thing open.
Inside, there was a boy. Rather, something that looked approximately like a boy who’d gone through a blender. It had two stumps for hands, two stumps for legs, one hairless head, and was rail-thin. There were four splots of blood on its back where nubs of fairy-gossamer wings twitched unsteadily. Like a wooden puppet, it hung limply, pointy ears unmoving, black sclera barely visible through half-lidded eyes. It was barely alive, kept purposefully at the brink of death.
“Fuck. How horrible.”
“It’s a lesser fae,” Addy said. “A hunting pixie. The Lord of the Wild Hunt keeps them as scouts until they develop into a greater form. They’re bottom-rung, lowest of the low.”
“Can we help it?”
“Since I know you won’t stop at anything until you’ve satisfied your need to feel helpful: A few drops of your regeneration potion ought to fix it up.” She gave me a nervous glance as I pulled the bottle out of my backpack. Mom and Ted already used half of the thing combined to great effect, which I was excited to see in person. For something this small, it shouldn’t take more than a drop or two.
Three drops of amber liquid splashed onto the tiny pixie and within seconds, its legs, wings, and hair was regrowing in front of my eye. Suddenly, its eyes opened wide, bloodshot and purple and manic.
“Dshenn…” Its voice had an otherworldly lilt to it, just one word sounding like it was lifted from a song. It raised its torso an inch before falling limp again, eyes shut closed. Then it lay there in its little coffin, still and unmoving, but for a tiny rising and falling of its chest.
“... what was that?”
“A ‘thank you’, I suppose?” Addy breathed a sigh. “You fixed its physical damage. As for the mental damage… not so sure. I’m not an expert on fae psychology. Probably keep it somewhere where it can’t just slit your throat when it wakes up. If it wakes up at all.”
“But the poor lil’ pixie—”
“Won’t die from that much. Believe me, the last thing lizard engineers want is for the fleshy bits of their warmachines to expire prematurely. Wrap it in a blanket and put it in a bottle, and it’ll probably just have its first nightmareless sleep in a long while. And if you really want to spoil it, give it some hard candy. The fae love candy.”
We both stared at the little creature.
“They were both alien looking, the poltergeist and this, both fae.” I said.
“They could’ve been bound together in service before being captured. That would explain why they were working together. Fae contracts override just about any kind of magic. They’re the best at contracts in the entire universe, as far as we can tell.”
One of the service bots — basically just a mobile roomba with a storage rack and a little emoting interface on top — finally managed to negotiate a way out of its prison of white lines. It ambled about before turning on a dime and heading for us.
“WoUlD yOu LiKe a CoMpLiMeNtArY ChEeSe PlAtTeR?” it asked.
Addy’s eyes grew wide as its storage tray opened up. “It’s got a gun!”
HUH!?
Blam blam!
Two shots rang out. I was caught flat-footed, no time to dodge. One went wide and one…
Ouch. Right in the ribcage.
+++
Addy tore the thing apart, wild with fury. Like any good hardware store, this place had a section on guns. It was a small miracle that the poltergeist had run out of juice after jumping to the service bot.
I was left a bit shocked. I’d never been at the business end of a gun before. It was terrifying. A flash, a loud noise, and then a moment of uncertainty followed by the knowledge that you’ve just been shot.
I tried not to show how much I was shivering. It wouldn’t do to label myself a coward, or worse, an incompetent.
We left the cleanup to Cawl and company. Nobody seemed happy that we’d trashed a good part of the kitchen section during our brief scuffle, but they were decidedly unhappier about the two soot stains that used to be employees. There was no sign of any police car or ambulance as we left the scene. The inside of the lodge was not the domain of mundane law enforcement.
We got paid in soulcoins by the system — a hundred of them — and an assortment of self-made smoked meat by the lodge. That part of the reward was clearly intended for Addy, judging by how she was sniffing at the stuff all the way back to the cab with barely contained avarice. As for lil’ ol’ me, they gave me a quarter-gallon blood bag. With a swirly straw.
Hm. Tangy and fruity.
It tasted better than I would have liked to admit.
I had packed the little pixie in layers of fluffy tissue before placing it in my backpack. For some reason Moe was incredibly distressed by this. I gave him his favorite granola bar, the one with chocolate and peanuts. He was munching on it when he fixed me with a squint, pointing two fingers at his eyes and then at mine.
Yeah yeah, if anything happens it's my responsibility.
“Sam. Hey.” Addy stared at me as I sat on the curb. “We’re leaving.”
“Mhm.” The part of my chest where I’d been shot ached something fierce with every step and breath. It was a small .38 calibre round, not enhanced by magic in any way. It didn’t go through my ribcage, but judging by the pain it definitely broke a rib. The pain wasn't too bad — thanks [Vampirism I]. Addy could have magicked it away with a single cast of [We’ll be fine].
I didn’t want that. This was my mistake, for letting myself relax before the kill notification had set in.
I could’ve lost a life there. It was a new type of foe; that was my excuse. But excuses weren’t enough, and I was hoping that the pain would solidify the learning experience.
The same cab driver as before was already waiting for us to get back.
“Figured you’d come this way again,” she said, “Thought I’d linger so I didn’t have to pay the toll on the way back either.”
She did pay the toll. Skipping it was not worth thirty soulcoins. We got off at the golfing course, an energy of unease and tension still in the air.
I could’ve done better. My doubles were still running in circles, leaving me as the odd one out. And I wasted [One moment] on impulse.
Addy’s right. I need more Mind, but more than that I need more training. An education. I have the kind of build that lets me fight smarter, not harder.
I was so busy with my own thoughts that I didn’t notice when Addy froze in place. There was a man sitting at a picnic table right in front of our RV. He was wearing sandals with socks, a plain gray shirt, cargo pants, and a summer hat to cover his bald head. All normal things, at first glance. But I felt something off about him.
He turned, bushy brows miming a joyful surprise. “My, you must be the Heroines of Creektin. Care to join me for some juice?”
“Who are you?” Addy asked, her voice low.
The man blinked. He scratched the back of his head. “Ah. I thought I sent a message ahead. Well, can’t be recognized everywhere.”
He stood up and offered his hand. “The name’s Glen. Glen Powell."
That was when everything clicked.
“The billionaire!?”